As football participation slips, high schools turn to 8-player game to preserve small town tradition

The Alden-Hebron High School Giants play eight-player football, a downsized version of the sport that is gaining popularity as schools confront dwindling rosters. The Giants defeated Rockford's Christian Life High School on homecoming night this year at the school. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The Alden-Hebron High School Giants play eight-player football, a downsized version of the sport that is gaining popularity as schools confront dwindling rosters. The Giants defeated Rockford's Christian Life High School on homecoming night this year at the school. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

John KeilmanChicago Tribune

It was a typical homecoming night in this village of 1,200 just south of the Wisconsin border. A tractor pulled a parade float along a downtown street. A marching band charged through a medley of brassy pop hits. And at halftime of the football game, flower-bearing Brownies helped crown a king and queen.

There was, however, one unusual part to the evening — the football game itself.

Alden-Hebron High School plays eight-player football, a downsized version of the sport that is gaining popularity as schools confront dwindling rosters. Six schools in Illinois are fielding eight-player teams this season, and as many as nine more could start next year.

That still leaves eight-player a long way from becoming an official Illinois High School Association sport — about 80 teams would be necessary for that, though it’s not an ironclad rule — but some coaches think that status could come soon.

“We said we were going to switch in December of last year, and since then we’ve had had several teams contact us, just trying to learn more,” said head football coach Jeff Bumsted of Polo Community High School, 100 miles west of Chicago. “I think in the future, three to five years down the road, they’ll have plenty of schools.”

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune

Members of the Alden-Hebron High School football team pass out candy while the homecoming parade winds through downtown Hebron before their eight-player football game against Rockford's Christian Life High School on Sept. 21, 2018.

Members of the Alden-Hebron High School football team pass out candy while the homecoming parade winds through downtown Hebron before their eight-player football game against Rockford's Christian Life High School on Sept. 21, 2018. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Implementing the sport would put Illinois on a par with states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri, which have dozens of eight-player teams. More important, some say, it will help preserve other small town traditions that are in danger of disappearing.

“It’s a different football game, but it’s still a football game,” said Linda Glenn, who watched the Alden-Hebron game clad in her son’s letter jacket. “Everyone comes out to support the school because the school is the center of the community. If you take away this, then you take away the whole thing, really — the spirit of the town.”

Football subcultures

Varieties of football that feature fewer than 11 players per side have existed for decades, mostly in rural communities. Texas, for example, is a stronghold of six-player football, a wide-open version of the game whose modified rules encourage scoring.

Granger Huntress, a University of Texas at Austin research director who chronicles the sport at sixmanfootball.com, said its enduring popularity is due not only to the state’s abundance of small towns, but also the host of private and charter schools that have opened in recent years.

“There are all these schools popping up, and if you want kids to come to your school in Texas, you’d better have a football team,” he said.

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune

The Alden-Hebron High School Giants compete against Rockford's Christian Life High School on Sept. 21, 2018. The field for an eight-player game is 40 yards wide instead of the traditional 53 1/3 yards.

The Alden-Hebron High School Giants compete against Rockford's Christian Life High School on Sept. 21, 2018. The field for an eight-player game is 40 yards wide instead of the traditional 53 1/3 yards. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Eight-player football, though, is the most common alternative. The National Federation of State High School Associations says nearly 850 schools across the country offer the sport — a fraction of the more than 14,000 high schools that field 11-player teams, but enough to create a thriving subculture in many states.

Wisconsin is one of them. It revived eight-player in 2012 after decades of dormancy, hoping to preserve football in schools with declining enrollment. Twenty-five teams now participate, and this year the state will put on its first playoff series.

“If you lose any of those people, you don’t have a program,” he said. “That’s the challenge in promoting the sport. There’s always going to be a lack of numbers if you’re playing eight-player football.”

Wisconsin limits eight-player football to schools with fewer than 200 students, but such a restriction could be tricky in Illinois, which has seen overall football participation decline by 15 percent over the last four years.

IHSA official Sam Knox said schools with enrollments much larger than 200 have mothballed their football programs. If they switch to eight-player teams, it could raise questions about competitive balance.

“You put a school of 700 up against a school of 100; is that a fair matchup?” he said. “We don’t know, because we haven’t gone down that road yet.”

Illinois might also have to standardize the size of the field. Typical football fields are 100 yards long and 53 yards wide, while eight-player fields are usually 80 yards long and 40 yards wide.

Alden-Hebron narrowed its field but left the length unchanged, while the eight-player team at Lake Forest Academy uses a full-sized field that suits its game-breaking talent.

“We’re used to playing on a regulation field,” said head coach Michael Buchanan. “With the athletes we have, we like to get them out in space and emulate a track meet.”

Eroding participation

Until recently, participation wasn’t an issue for the Giants of Alden-Hebron High School. Its football program typically attracted more than 30 athletes even though its student body comprised fewer than 150 teens. Success followed: Under coach John Lalor, it qualified for the postseason 12 out of 14 years.

As with many schools, though, its roster began to erode — a consequence of shrinking attendance and growing concussion worries, Lalor said. It became clear that continuing with 11-player football would mean putting freshmen on the same field as upperclassman, a situation the coach was keen to avoid.

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune

Alden-Hebron High School head coach John Lalor gives instruction before an eight-player game on Sept. 21, 2018. It became clear that continuing with 11-player football would mean putting freshmen on the same field as upperclassman, a situation the coach was keen to avoid.

Alden-Hebron High School head coach John Lalor gives instruction before an eight-player game on Sept. 21, 2018. It became clear that continuing with 11-player football would mean putting freshmen on the same field as upperclassman, a situation the coach was keen to avoid. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

“They’re just not physically mature,” he said. “You’ve got a 110-pound freshman going against a 200-pound senior, that’s probably not going to have a great outcome. The last thing you want to do is scare people away from the sport.”

So a year ago, the school started one of the state’s first eight-player teams. The board of education had to sign off on the change, but President Mike Norton said it was an easy call.

“We didn’t really have that discussion in terms of (whether it’s) real football,” he said. “I say they hit just like an 11-man team. They run just as hard. It’s football, regardless of whether it’s eight-man or 11-man.”

To the uninitiated, the most noticeable differences are the narrowness of the field and the depopulated line of scrimmage (the offensive line has only three players rather than five). Fewer bodies also increase the odds of a big play.

“In 11-man, one person slips a tackle, you might have another linebacker coming to make that tackle,” said Alden-Hebron senior Brad Judson, the team’s quarterback and outside linebacker. “One person misses their job in eight-man, it’s all downhill from there.”

Homecoming thriller

Alden-Hebron had 16 players in its first season, enough to field both a varsity and a JV squad. It went 3-6, having to play some teams twice because of a shortage of opponents.

This year’s 15-player squad was undefeated heading into the homecoming game against Rockford’s Christian Life High School. As the teams warmed up, some students expressed relief that football had survived.

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune

Alden-Hebron High School seniors win the spirit jug during a homecoming game for its the school's eight-player football team Sept. 21, 2018.

Alden-Hebron High School seniors win the spirit jug during a homecoming game for its the school's eight-player football team Sept. 21, 2018. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

“If we don’t have football, we don’t have cheer,” said senior cheerleader Leigha Erckfritz. “Being able to continue that tradition with eight-man football is really important to me. If we didn’t have this, there wouldn’t be anything. There would be no traditions like that.”

Junior Loriann Bowdish said the hoopla of homecoming would be impossible to replicate with another sport.

“You wouldn’t be doing that with track,” she said. “Run a few laps? It would be very interesting.”

The game itself, played before several hundred rambunctious fans, turned out to be a thriller. Alden-Hebron ran out to a 24-6 lead, but Christian Life took advantage of Giants turnovers to catch up, finally taking the lead in the fourth quarter when its quarterback threw a two-point conversion under heavy pressure.

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune

Alden-Hebron quarterback Brad Judson celebrates the Giants' 32-26 win over Rockford's Christian Life High School on Sept. 21, 2018.

But the Alden-Hebron players, some of whom never left the game, had enough energy for one final drive, punching in the ball from the 5-yard line to regain the lead. When a Christian Life ball carrier stepped out of bounds trying to convert a 4th and 8, the game belonged to the Giants.

As the exultant players bounded away to the locker room, Lalor said the night proved the importance of preserving football, no matter what form it takes.

“Could you tell the difference in the excitement or the emotion?” he said. “That’s what I’ve been telling everyone. They’re learning the same lessons — how to fight through something, how to come back and how to pick themselves up.”